In the mid to late 1980's, clearly unimpressed by my high pitched wailing, my parents firmly insisted I take swimming lessons. Again. "Stop it with the damn books already, you've read enough," my mom shouted, becoming the first and only mother in American history to pry a novel from her kid's hands. "You're soft and white and floppy. You are going to drown one day and all the moms on our street will blame me. I won't have it. Put on your bathing suit and get in the damn car!"
I know my mom's anxiety about me drowning is a deep-seeded neurosis planted by her friend Elaine. Years ago my parents had plans to dig a pool. When the nice man came to measure our yard for what would surely be the key to my life-long popularity, the women of Union Street emerged like superstitious villagers of medieval times. "Never, ever, ever, would I put in a pool with two young kids," they all said, shaking their heads with disbelief, as if my parents were installing a basement dungeon equipped with studded maces and a live Civil War cannon. "They could drown, Maria. Do you want that on your conscience?"
It became a thing after that. It was like if my mom went ahead with the pool plan, the whole neighborhood would think she was a bad mother. She was also growing increasingly concerned about the reckless antics of my daredevil brother Billy, who was fond of holding me captive underwater at Sandy Hook. Rather than reprimanding this bad behavior, it seemed more practical to have her daughter formerly learn to swim.
So we joined the Strathmore Pool Club, and later, moved on up Jefferson-style to Holmdel Pool Club, a slightly swankier pool facility with 25% less soggy french fries in the lap pool.
Unfailingly, Mom enrolled me every year in swimming lessons at the start of every summer season. It became embarrassingly obvious by fifth grade, and my thus fifth round of swimming lessons, that I would never progress with my age group. I was doomed to chill with the Guppies while my friends swam upstream to Trout and Shark.
These designations-- Guppie, Trout, Shark-- and the various levels in between pretty much worked like karate belts. Each kid "graduated" a level every summer, keeping with their cohorts, usually kids they knew from school or from day camp, where their gleeful mothers dropped them off to do six hours of forced crafting in the open sun. (Oh yes, it was good times.)
I was mortified on many levels during those lessons. First, they occurred at seven in the morning, when the temperature outside was a crisp sixty degrees (and sometimes windy) and the pool was a terrifying ice bath. I hugged my bathing suit, gasping with cold, dreading the moment when the teacher, fresh off a night's worth of prescription pill abuse over at Kean University's summer housing dorm, made us jump in. Every summer started with the placement swim test and ended with the diving test.
It was dreadful, and I was so powerless: I knew if I didn't pass that dive test, I wouldn't advance out of Guppy. And by my third time around, it became apparent they weren't going to socially promote me. This was the eighties. I was going to be sacrificed up to the work ethic god. Ronald Reagan with his weekend ranch hobby would approve. This little girl is going to swim. And not only that. She's gonna have to DIVE. It's so American.
I stood one morning in August on the edge of the board. The kids gathered around in encouragement. Most of them were at least three years younger than me, compounding my sense of doom and pressure. One kid had missing fingers on one hand but that clearly didn't stop him from having the strongest breast stroke in the class. That kid is probably a world class surfer right now, and there's me, softly crying on the diving board, worrying about getting water up my nose. Worrying I might hit my head on the bottom.
"You can do it!" barked the instructor. Oh, what was his name? Scott. So handsome towering above me in the morning pinks and whites of another New Jersey summer morning. Once I had a bloody nose and he escorted me to first aid to get an ice pack. It killed fifteen minutes of pool time. And I, although around ten years old, was old enough to innocently enjoy the attention of his brown eyes and the wingspan of his tan, long arms. (Where are you now? Sporty lifeguard pool teacher of Holmdel Swim Club? You're probably 45 now. Did you know I faked that bloody nose by scratching at it deliberately? Why couldn't I tell you that I didn't want to do the dive, and that all he had to do was check it off his stupid clipboard, and pass me along to Trout? I already felt like a little freak, with my bunny teeth and noseplugs. But at that age, you fear authority, as fragile and absurd as his authority was, it kept me adequately anxious about that diving test all of July. For years!)
I tipped my head down and leaned forward. It's so easy, the free-fall part; I've seen it done a million times; my own father, in his younger years, could fold beautifully like a jacknife into the Atlantic and come up to the surface in one unbroken line.
All eyes on me, and I held my breath.
I did what I always did: flail downwards, like a diving bird, grabbing my nose at that last precious moment, half-diving. Half-not diving.
"Aww, she didn't do it," lamented my classmates, hopping on alternate feet, shaking the water out of their ears.
"I don't care. I hate diving. I hate swimming," I said nonchalantly, heaving myself up the ladder and hiding inside my yellow towel. I scanned the snack bar ahead for my mother's signature sun hat.
Honestly, I wasn't permanently traumatized. I had come to terms with my small failure by age eleven or so; my interests were in writing stories, lazying around those strappy lounge chairs with a Babysitter's Club book, or playing kickball with my friends. Swim lessons were a small price for the epic days of summer, where each day sometimes was its own self-contained adventure.
But there's a space inside of me. Not a void. Not a longing. Just a small gap. Picture a kid standing on a rock over water. She needs to leap widely to get to the next stone. She's seen her friends do it, so she knows it can be done. She wants to do it because she wants to cross. She wants to do it because everyone is watching. She needs faith in her feet to not slip, even though the distance isn't really that great. It's as small as the gap between a dive and a fall.
No comments:
Post a Comment